There exist in many swimming pools of hotels or vacation resorts in warm climate countries or in the southern part of the United States, fixed installations considered as drinking bars whereby individuals can congregate and sit at a table or bar top while keeping the lower part of their bodies submerged in the water of the swimming pool and having optionally removable or adjustable canopies or parasols over their heads. Such swimming pool “bars” are usually massive, fixed to the floor of the swimming pool and have to be designed and integrated into the architecture of huge and generally commercial swimming pools. There does not seem to exist any portable, off-the-shelf version of such bars available to the average private owner of an ordinary swimming pool.
There exist numerous floating devices which consist of inflatable or air containing tubes (U.S. Pat. No. 5,769,022), rafts (U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,822), canopies (U.S. Pat. No. 4,683.900) but none of them can be used for seating at a table in a pool, whatever depth of water exists therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,139,382 (Esbacher) describes a floating unit consisting of two or more rectangular sheets of floatable polymer material where the upper sheet contains one or several holding spaces including one for holding the base of a sunshade. However, there is no possibility for this invention to serve as a floating device where individuals can sit at a table while remaining in a swimming pool.